Reflections of a riverside walker

Pause... Reflect... Write... Continue...
On the sands of Time...Along the river of Life...
Calming the waves of the Mind...Braving the Whirls of Change...
Watch that thought and stand by...
And quietly let the storm pass by.

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Part 1 of this article was about why PDF India is not #DigitalIndia and some thoughts on access to public data and data submission. Now that the rant is over, let me document some of the woes that I came face to face in accessing public data. A couple of years back, I was consulted by a friend once on having to extract select data fields from hundreds of PDFs from SEBI website, for research work. It involved the extraction of fields such as Offer Price, Negotiated price etc (well, whatever their finance lingo), from Letter of Offer documents submitted by merger/takeover companies to SEBI, over 15 years. Putting together a strategy using open-source/free tools and an eye to automate most of the tedious tasks to the maximum and maintain accuracy, a sequence of steps was devised for automated extraction. In some stages, semi-automated. Some steps required human eye reviews from time to time, about whether the automation ghost, that eerily moved the mouse pointer at midnight, is working properly or is being interrupted by the invalid data ghost.

The fact that information was collected as PDF and not as structured data gives less scope for meaningful analysis of data. Ideally, the data should have been collected from the companies in more organized formats such as XML, Excel or CSV or by seeking information in a web form, as is the standard practice. This would have allowed the collection of raw data by SEBI in a database-friendly format. Since this was not to be, it led to a situation where the structured data have to be sought by sifting through PDF documents. For ages, we have been looking at standards like IFRS and XBRL from a distance, but nothing moved because SMEs complained of compliance cost.

No options to bulk download :

There were no options to bulk-download documents by querying for multiple companies based on search criteria. One had to traverse the pages a few links at a time to download the documents. This constraint was later overcome partially by a series of semi-automated steps using tools such as FlashGot, TinyTask and the parsing of the pages for file paths.

Inconsistency and non-standard methods in the organising of PDF links in the SEBI website :

The formats in which the document links were organized varied between pre-2005 and post-2005 periods. Links to pre-2005 takeover documents, would lead to a direct download link of the Final Letter of Offer. The file name would be numeric, giving no idea about the company in question. Such as this. On the other hand, post-2005 takover documents, would lead to another intermediary web page of links for the company (such as this), which in turn would lead to the PDF link. In the later years, the PDF file would be named more meaningfully such as LOF etc (which is a relief), but not consistently. This meant more manual downloading and filtering of necessary documents from unnecessary ones. Some HTML tags filtering using tools such as NotePad++, followed by exporting to a database, were used to partially overcome these constraints.

Unsuitability of PDF format for structured data :

The PDF format doesn't lend itself to efficient parsing to collect data. Moreover, the data fields required (such as Average price), were often presented in a table inside the document. This meant that the PDF documents needed to go through a series of steps before data could be culled out from them. Calibre software and the online service pdfonline.com were used in batch processing to convert PDFs to HTML web pages. The individual code lines from the web pages were exported to an SQL database and parsed for HTML tags to look for tables that contained the required fields.

Lack of uniformity and fixed format for the presence of data in the document :

Inside the PDF document, data was not found consistently in the same location or format. One had to look for references to the section title such as 'Financial Justification' and then look for the data in the table that geographically followed it below. Keywords such as 'Negotiated Price', 'Average Price' and various combinations of such phrases had to be listed to look for data. Even after all this, one wasn't sure whether the data fields would indeed be found or not.

Inefficiency of using text-based search to identify data fieds :

When found, they may not be found in a consistent form or a phrase. For instance, 'Not Applicable' could be any of NA, N.A., N-A,a hiphen etc. Sometimes, the justification section would be a paragraph that contained none of the keywords. For an automated lookup, references to 'infrequently traded' might often been confused with 'infrequently traded on NSE and frequently traded on BSE'. These made automated collection inefficient and necessitated a manual study of the PDF documents.

Mismatch between different databases in company name mentions :

While some data fields required for the study were to be found from Letters of Offer, others were extracted from the Prowess database. The takeovers involve an acquiring company and a target company. There were inconsistencies and mixups in both these names between the Prowess and SEBI data sources. SEBI would list the letter of offer against the target company whereas Prowess would list it the other way round. In some cases, where there were multiple takeover instances relating to same company names, requiring the PDFs of multiple years. This meant resolving the mix-up by manually reviewing the PDF and data fields. One had to arrive at a cross-tab of SEBI name, Prowess Name and the correct Letter-of-Offer-Name in the takeover context before one could collect accurate data.

---------------------------

This is not the issue of a single website of one government insitution or a government department. It’s the opposite, of being unable to work as a single website for the whole country. It’s about the isolated approach to.presenting data to the public or seeking data from them, sulking it as an unwanted duty imposed by the Digital India frenzy.

The data.gov.in sets an excellent precedent with public APIs throwing an ocean of private opportunities open. It is high time that other government institutions join the bandwagon of unified data view architecture both for submission and presentation of data, in truly seamless transactional digitization, keeping in view bulk submission and bulk download options. Data.gov.in has plenty of uncompleted agenda ahead of having to unify the data from the states at a regular timeline and keeping it update and in getting the various uncomplying departments to co-operate.

Some data dinosaurs have to be taught to dance digitally, because evolution is binary. You either become distinct or you become extinct.

It
ain’t so much of #DigitalIndia yet. It's just PDF India. For those looking for meaningful, processible data,
the difference between the two can make a world of difference. For some
government institutions, digital means PDF or JPEG image of scanned print reports,
including spreadsheets and balance sheets. One might argue that nowadays it's
possible to extract data from PDFs using technology. But it's like garbage
disposal and recycling. The messup shouldn't be created in the first place. Image
processing algorithms were not invented for spreadsheets.

A
good example of a bad PDF document is the District Census Handbook of 2011. It
will have reams and reams of pages, with one page showing the first half of a
horizontal spreadsheet, titled “Industrial Catgory of”, and next page showing
the other half, titled “Marginal Workers”. Man, that must be some innovation in
bad design .

The
salient rule in data collection or presentation must be that, at the raw
source, the data must be collected in a format that is processible by
automation. It should minimize human eye intervention only for reviews and
green/red flags and throwing up exception patterns. Or for discovering insights
of wisdom from "rich experience", which a chip can't discern. Days
may have come when chips outsmart elders in experiential wisdom as well,
LoL.

Companies
like HowIndiaLives.com , where my friend Ramnath is involved, address this
problem by helping their customers and website visitors make visual sense out
of the non-sense data in India's
public domain. They also present it in a beautiful and user-friendly ways and
help project stakeholders glean useful insights from data. That data shouldn't
have been nonsensical in the first place, in its raw open form, is the sad
fact. That they converted rants like these into a business opportunity is their
ingenuity. While raw data must be disseminated in open processible formats, it
should lead to an ecosystem of companies like these, which compete in
discovering insights from data and presenting them, without having to spend too
much time cleaning it. Not just cleaning it, but having to fight
inconsistencies between multiple sources of data for the same item of
information, I guess, must be another tedious task.

Taking
a leaf out of international open data like data.un.org, the open data platform
for India
is a big leap in this direction for sharing of public datasets (though they
don’t have options to bulk download data).

On the other hand, some of the
transactional websites of the government websites can make life extremely tedious.
If you are a high-volume transaction submitter, your life can become miserable,
having to submit thousands of records into old-style web forms. Some of them
must have been in a cave since AJAX
was invented. They can put thousands of person names with option buttons on a
single page, expecting the user to scroll down or use the browser's Find, choose one name and then submit. Wwwhaaat!

The
format in which data must be submitted to government websites must be
pre-defined with digital processing in mind. For a billion-headed Titanosaur
like India,
it should definitely have scale in mind too. Ideally, it shouldn't even be
Windows OS intensive and Windows OS requiring. Kerala, for example, wants to
dabble in Linux and it's a good thing. I hope they don't up give up like Munich, the city that wanted to run on Linux.
But, that kind of thinking is good. It may lead at least to the adoption of
open formats for seeking data, if not an open-source OS.

Not
all is a sad story with Digital India. There are a handful of bright spots in good design, that
take scale and digital processibility into account. Aadhaar, no doubt, is a beautiful
example. The Income Tax website often has some sudden quirky differences
between its Java tool and the Excel tool with mysterious conclusions of inability to generate the XML file. But it at least uses XML to upload data.
Thats a good thing. Even within the Income Tax Department, you may not find the
same kind of good design for other tasks, for instance, for applying for
non-deduction of TDS. Another of my favorite examples of handling technology at
scale carefully is SBI's transition to core banking and their merger with
associate banks. It was not about open data or about government per se. But, at
its scale, it's truly a project of teaching elephants to dance, and for their
size, they did a mighty good job at it. The GSTN must be the next Aadhaar-like
unifier, after the easing out of the initial troubles.

This is the intermission, the end of Part 1. In Part 2, I mention some of the woes I faced while extracting data from PDFs from the SEBI website. It has a sad ending that rounds up by saying :

Some data dinosaurs have to be taught to dance digitally, because evolution is binary. You either become distinct or you become extinct.

Lot of technical debris ahead on Part 2. Blissful poets, musicians and other non-tech readers not allowed beyond this point. :-) :-)

Saturday, October 21, 2017

How long does a good person remain good ? The true test of the goodness of a person may lie in extreme conditions that test it. They say the strongest of tyres are tested on the toughest of roads. Is your neighbour good, will he remain good to you in times of trouble ? Wait a minute, ask muslim widows who are victims of the Bosnian war. We don't get a very enthusiastic answer that we normally face. Most of us live under "normal" conditions, so it helps to assume an average goodness in the people around us. It's necessary too. However, in times of war, or war-like riots, the same human, acts differently, as if possessed by a war ghost.

The book, "The Shattering of the Soul", which I just completed, captures this aspect of human nature. It captures the stories of war misery of 10 Bosnian muslim women, in a first hand account of their experiences on how the ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serbs during 1992-95 unfolded, and how their lives were changed overnight. All the accounts have plenty of the events in common, that makes it a little repetitive in detail. They would all say, roughly, “We had a house and a farm, and we grew our food. War broke out, we were invaded and looted. We fled. We want to go back to our roots, but what is left but ruins?”.

But, if you read one story at a time, during train travels as I did, you see the common thread not just of the events, but of both evil and good in man. You see that all grief is similar to the onlooker, yet each grief is different for the victim. The feelings of the common people in a typical village are so different from the ones who might have initiated the wars, but the stories of war travel far and wide to create more wars and more misery. It is as if the ethnic war ghost is a virus that spreads like an epidemic. It spreads, not through touch or food, but through the shreaks in the voices and fiery red eyes of patients infected with hysteric rage. It causes a clouded vision of the world and makes you hate thy neighbour as your enemy.

The book speaks of how the Bosnian families were protected by the Serbian neighbours of the same village, although it was Serbians who looted them. The Serbian neighbour would stand up for them, they would stop their Serbian soldiers and say, “This one here is a decent family. They don't have weapons. Spare them.” . Yet another would say, “Take my life before you touch that child”. Some others may not stand as upright, but they would smuggle cheese and other food supplies for their Bosnian neighbours. Some would warn them in time so they could go into the woods and stay for days, till the invaders came and looted their houses and went back. After the houses were devastated, some would at least call them for a coffee in the afternoon to their house. How many of us can manifest goodness in the face of threat to our lives ?

They also speak of how, in some other cases, the very same Serbian neighbours who were close until the previous day, would participate in the loot of the Bosnian house. Some said they had to point guns at their Bosnian muslim neighbours, because otherwise, their own Serbian clan would kill them. They would make the youth from the Bosnian families work like a slave. The victims mention how they were clueless that the very faces whom they met across the street everyday would land at their door, demanding to chase them out and loot their houses.

Until then, they were neighbours who helped each other build their houses. The houses were built by the neighbours lending a hand to each other, except for the roof, which would be given to the professional. The houses that were self-built and built as a shared labour between Bosnian and Serbian families would be destroyed, looted, the doors and windows or whatever was left just taken away by the invaders. Families with children had to move over to Slovenia, leaving all property back in their village, travelling long distances, even having to bribe for their paperwork to move out. Mosques on the way would arrange some food for the children of the migrating victims. The stories distinctly recall, how it was all fine till one day when the war started and the news of war arrived in the village and neighbours become archenemies.

Which of these two is true human nature ? How does one know which part of Man will manifest when ? I can't help but think of similar stories from the Gujarat Riots of 2002 or the exodus of North-East people from Bangalore in 2012.

As the compiler of the stories admits, the book captures only the view of select Bosnian Muslim victims, there are no stories about Serbian or Croatian victims, which must be equally mentioned. But as the epilogue argues, that is not much relevant. "Human suffering due to mutual hatred is universal, and by presenting the suffering of some we are presenting the suffering of all".

Sri Ramakrishna tells an interesting story about two brothers fighting for land. They were on either side of the disputed border and were quarelling at the top of their voice, about the patchy border. “It's mine”, one said. “No, it's mine”, yelled the other. Voices grew into arms, arms grew into bruises, bruises grew into attacks and soon they both dropped dead at the border. God, who was watching the fight from above, felt funny. “Well, whose land is this now ?” He asked. There were no owners left to answer.

After I read the book, I felt like listening to A R Rahman's song from 1947 Earth : "Ishwar Allah Tere Jahan Pe". It's a beautiful song that captures the questions that would have, surely arisen in the minds of those war victims rendered homeless, with their souls shattered and their hopes killed. From the ruins of their houses and ashes of their families, some seeds of hope must have flown across the Slovenian border. They wanted to come back and they wanted to live. But they had to choose between the two. The ghost of war abandoned their villages, and now went to possess some other race, tribe or religion, elsewhere on earth. But they had to struggle, rebuilding their lives and houses in another distant land. This time, without a neighbour, to lend a helping hand.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

To read a book on Lokmanya Tilak's life had been on my to-do list for a long time. There were three reasons for this :

1. His work ethic : I had read somewhere that he was almost a workaholic, he worked long hours relentlessly for the society and country, more than people do at their jobs. He was a very versatile learner and worker and in his life, he did all kinds of things. He was a journalist, edited two magazines, taught law
classes, was a maths teacher in school and college, a lover of trigonometry, started a school, a college (Fergusson College, Pune), did social work during the plague, researched Vedic History, wrote a commentary on the Gita, he even ran a sugar factory for a while. How could one person be and do all these things ?

2. I had heard that, among the freedom fighters, Swami mentioned Lal-Bal-Pal particularly in praise.

3. Having read and written on Gandhi at my blog, it would be great to acquire a perspective totally different from Gandhi. Tilak and Gandhi mutually respected each other, but during their time, it was clear that their paths were different and they knew it too. Tilak debated this with Gandhi and tried to persuade him to give up non-violence and didn't succeed at it.

I wanted to understand Tilak the man, his personality, his early years and what made him to be what he was. So I stepped into the university library after 10 years and picked up Tilak's biography. by Dhananjay Kheer. After the first few chapters, the book turned out to be more on his political chronography, he did this at that Congress meeting, then Congress met next year, then he did that, again Congress met and so on. Nevertheless, I could observe many events in his life and his views and some of them I never had an inkling about. Here are some points and anecdotes that I found interesting and inspiring.

Tilak the social worker :

He was a man who worked amidst the masses. We all know that he used Shivaji's Birth anniversary and Ganesh Chathurthi as platforms to raise the patriotic awareness of the people. He believed in ground action, to be with the people.

During the Poona plague, the British appointed committees to segregate patients. This was to be implemented by British soldiers. There were reports that they were acting too harshly and there were excesses. The British Government said, it was just doing its medical job. Tilak joined the search teams himself, visiting house to house, to ensure the British soldiers didn't commit excesses. He also created awareness in the public about hygiene in slums and urged the Hindus not to stick to old superstitions and stay away from hospital treatment. He started a Hindu hospital where Hindus were treated at their expense. He started a free kitchen in the segregation camp to help the poor.

Tilak believed that it was the duty of the people to see that the government implements laws effectively. He said it was the responsibility of the local leaders, and if they are prosecuted for it, they shouldn't mind suffering imprisonment for the good of the people.

He criticized the Indian National Congress often, from within, of the same set of elite people, meeting from time to time, the same set of resolutions about working "along with" the British Government, what was the use ? Get peasants! Help them solve problems of land revenue, salt, forest and excise under which they they are crushed. He told the farmers to pay the govt dues if they had money, but not to do so by contracting debts! He travelled from village to village to gather farmers support for the struggle.

His was possibly the first agrarian movement in support of independence. The freedom struggle probably was the last truly national movement in India, that involved all sections of society. I couldn't miss out on the comparison with anti-corruption movement in India in 2011. Where were the masses ? The office-going urbanites and the mouse-clicking social media were there, but where were the people who are often at the last receiving end of corruption ? Who travelled from village to village to communicate to them and collect them ?

Tilak the Leader :

Over time, Tilak reached a point of belief that the leader should do what the people want, but are unable to express or unable to do. He maintained a very strong regional identity, he was highly respected among the Maharashtrian freedom leaders. A Congress session at Pune or Bombay would be unthinkable without Tilak's participation. But he also established a great rapport with like-minded leaders in other far-flung areas, such as V.O.Chidambaram Pillai, Aurobindo etc. It must have been quite difficult to stay within the Congress and fight its lethargy and engage in dialogue with critics in the same conference venue. Yet, he would reach a common ground, if the overall unity of the Indian National Congress or the overall interest of the Nation was paramount. One could have easily expected a strong, independent and fiery mind like Tilak to have broken away into a separate party, out of frustration and impatience, or to be removed for his insistent approach, but neither happened. Other leaders sought him out for his views, even as they knew he may not agree with them.

Tilak refused to plead guilty, although if he had done so, it would have reduced his prison sentence in the sedition case. I was curious to know, did he regret it later ? In contrast, a few weeks back, Gokhale had given an unconditional apology for his speaking up while he was in Britain. Savarkar too was forced to tender an apology and undertaking to refrain from millitant activity. Tilak was no such man. It looked like his diabetes in the prison and weak health changed him a bit. That, and his age, did it change his extremist views, did it soften them? Who can have a peek into how the great minds transition ?

At many points in Tilak's life, he must have faced the conflict of improving the Indian society versus fighting the British, and the conflict of having to support other methods which were different from him. He must have handled the conflict of what is good and bad for the country at that time, or what was a lesser evil in the longer interest. The ethical dilemmas that a leader faces in a real life working for the society are so different from the ones taught in the story-telling classrooms. How does a leader act when all you see around is misery and conflict and there is no one to raise the people's awareness ?

There was once a strange case when Tilak fought a case for the corrupt, while condemning them in Kesari. An English official collected bribes from 17 mamlatdars for favouring them promotions. The corruption came to light. The British lured the Mamlatdars saying if they confessed who the official was, no action would be taken against them. After the English official was named, the British backtracked. They didn't want to put out a ugly picture that an English official was corrupt, so they changed his offence into some minor stuff and let him free. They then went after the Mamlatdars and dismissed them for paying bribes. Tilak said, the British went back on their word, fought the case for the Mamlatdars, won it and had them re-instated. He then condemned bribery and the Mamlatdars who offered bribes. I guess, he must have reasoned, between corruption and the British, fight the bigger evil first!

There was a case where Tilak might have actually concealed the wrong-doer. One Damodar Chapekar, acting on his own, had shot dead a British official who had acted tyrannically during the plague. At dawn next day, he sent a message to Tilak that said, 'The previous night the Ganesha at Ganeshkhind had been propitiated'. Tilak probably knew about some rough plans, he immediately understood the message and exclaimed, 'Is it so? Then be cautious now!'. He later wrote in his paper about both the police raj and also that the culprit should be nabbed and due course of law should be followed. He later said, when asked by the officer : 'I can't help you. Even if I have information, I will never pass it on to you. I believe offender should be punished adequately, but I will never agree to be anybody's spy and never will I betray anyone in the world. But I won't put obstacles in your path. The murder is a blot upon Poona, when found, the offender should be punished as per law.' Later, when Damodar was apprehended, he requested Tilak, who was in jail, to draft his appeal. Tilak did so. Damodar carried Tilak's copy of Gita to the gallows.

Tilak the Man :

He was a man of amazing personal integrity, the kind it's probably impossible to find nowadays in public life. His idealistic approach often put him in conflict with others, but he was a man of strong convictions.

Once, Tilak agreed to be the executor of the will of a dying friend Shri Baba Maharaj. After his death, his relatives falsely accused Tilak and disputed the will. Tilak had to go through the court case for 19 years without compromise and won the case, because he had given a word to his friend!

Once, when a revolutionary sent a diamond as a gift to Tilak from abroad, he ordered it to be sold and the proceeds to be used for the independence struggle.

He wanted members of his institution (Deccan Education Society) to follow a simple spartan lifestyle. He was against regular automatic pay-rises, a fact some of his married colleagues had problem accepting, because they felt, according to market conditions, pay has to raise. Also, Tilak said, if members did work outside the job, the remuneration from outside work will belong to the society's common fund. These were very ideal beliefs, and he himself practised them but it was impractical for others to follow. He had to, unfortunately, resign out of the very college he started, because of extreme views, which he considered as matters of principle and his colleagues considered highhandedness.

Tilak encouraged his friends and colleagues to have a rest vacation, once a year, in seclusion. Tilak's book 'The Arctic Home of the Vedas' was written during one such, in Singhad after his release from Yeravada Jail. In jail, he had received a flash insight from the Vedic sentence :'The Sun rose after many days', which was an inspiration for the book.

He had a great ability to revert to calm, in the face of danger. When the police surrounded his house for writing seditious articles in Kesari, he quietly surrendered. By the time the court official went to process his bail, (which was denied) and returned, he found Tilak happily snoring in the cell. Haha, cool as a cucumber.

He used his stay in the prison to write a commentary on the Bhagawad Gita. What an intellectual realm our leaders maintained even in the prison those days! Aurobindo had a vision of Lord Krishna, Vinobhaji learnt 4 languages and gave talks on the Gita to fellow prisoners! Tilak favoured an "activism" version of the understanding of the Gita and saw Karma Yoga in the light of patriotism and service to the country.

When he was in prison, other prisoners had great respect for Tilak. The jail authorities sometimes used Tilak's moral authority to tame the rogue prisoners, Tilak's word had the magical respect with them.

There were a few things I found myself disagreeing while reading the book. His extreme orthodoxy and casteism, his belief that independence should precede social reform and not go hand in hand, his extreme pro-Hindu leanings etc. Strangely, he opposed the increase of minimum age of consent for marriage from 10 to 12 by the British. Publicly, he opposed it saying it was against the tenets of Hinduism. Privately, he agreed that it was okay to raise. But he opposed it on two grounds (a) Who is the British to meddle with Indian tradition ? Let Indians decide for indians. (b) Change in Hinduism has to come from within itself, not forced from outside. But some of these were probably just a function of his times while we view it in the modern context of progressiveness.

We know that Tilak met Swami Vivekananda and Shirdi Sai Baba. Let me close with a few more sweet #TIL snippets :

3. Much before he appeared on the Indian freedom scene, Gandhi met Tilak, Gokhale and other leaders seeking their support for his South African movement.

4. When Tilak visited Cambridge, he gave a brilliant talk on why Indian students studying there should go back to India after their studies and dedicate themselves to the cause of the nation. Guess who was in that student audience : Subhash Chandra Bose! . Now, that should be the biography I should pick up next.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

The medical pond is a complex ecosystem. It's too vast in surface area, too specialized in skill sets and too uncertain in ramifications. If you are the recipient, it's also too personal. There is increased talk about alternate medicinal streams and their effectiveness or otherwise. Many seem to be singling out Allopathy (and often, in loose reference, modern medical science), as being a dominant predator causing imbalances in an otherwise peaceful pond. So, the question often asked (and I won't answer) is : "Are you, like, Allopathy believer or Alternative medicine believer ?" Only humans are capable of these extraordinary questions, you know. They convert science into a religion and religion into science, or say something like "both are one" and confuse people, LoL.

By alternative medicine streams, I mean the
whole bunch, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, Siddha, Yunani, Acupuncture and so on. So, here is some of my chillar thrown into the pond, on why allopathy is not the complete picture, what's ailing alternate medicine streams and why many would find them unconvincing. It's becoming clear that my blog is for the relaxed reader, because I can't write short posts. :-) But then, it's the blog's anniversary and I haven't written since Steve Jobs, so it's the suppressed gush of a few months. :-)

Roots : To start with a very simple thing, most alternate streams of medicine rely on allopathy, their devices or the concepts for the diagnostics, even from testing the blood or measuring the BP. Allopathy itself drew some of these from ancient forms of medicine, but the original ancient forms of diagnostics aren’t even practised in their pure or correct form, and if done, too few and far between to attract reasonable attention. Let alone being proven in favour by science in the labs and peer-reviewed journals, except for anecdotal evidence.

Research : There is probably a lean research framework for some of those alternate streams, but none of them have the research rigour, repeatability of experiments, peer disagreeability and testing techniques, of the modern era. I am not saying alternate streams should fall in line with the western science or their research framework. It may be that, the truths of one science cannot be validated by the framework of another science, because their underlying concepts are different. But, it’s up to the alternate medicine streams to come up with their own research and publishing framework, where, even within their own practitioner community a certain phenomenon can be accepted, rejected, endorsed or vindicated by members of their own ecosystem. Now, it’s all like the Mummy-Daddy kirana shop, like “Aunty got cured, I got cured, Uncle improved vastly, Try it and you’ll know, You can see it for yourself in 21 days” and so on. The "personal story" thingy, is surely an emotional and often a genuinely felt expression of a truth that happened in someone's life, it's a good thing, it's a statement of real experience. It shouldn't be discarded as imagination. But, it's one thing to share the joy and suggest it to others with fervour, another thing to start doling out suggestions based on your home-grown "expertise" and non-formal studies, another thing to conduct melas to coach people, and a totally different thing to base a science on such data.

The alternate medicine streams doesn’t have to be studied and validated by allopathy doctors, labs and journals but, at the minimum, there needs to be collation and organizing of their own anecdotal evidence. Also, if they are using Allopathy methods and devices for certain part of their work and research, like diagnosis and review, there is a need for the alternate medicine stream to evolve its own methods and devices based on its own fundamental concepts. Why would you use, Science A based principles on X, Y and Z to diagnose and then use Science B, based on principles P, Q and R to treat, particularly if you believe their principles fundamentally contradict each other ? In what sense do you think they can co-exist, whether such a co-existence has been studied and in what proportions do they mix, match or meddle ? May be some such techniques for independent diagnosis by other streams are already present, then the issue is of state support, awareness creation, publicity and wider acceptance etc. India is slightly better off in that way, in the sense that there are state-supported professional courses that support the state of native forms of medicine as an organized subject and technically qualify in those streams.

Claims: Another issue is, the often “fantastic but untrue” claims of “I have cure for Cancer”, “I have cure for AIDS”. Quacks are present in every stream including allopathy, so it's not about them. But, even among the technically qualified professionals in the alternate streams, such claims are not uncommon. Okay, assume such claims are not "claims" but, valid instances, the genuineness of which the world is refusing to see. Even for the good and qualified practicioners, it is quite common for practitioners in alternate medicine, to “give up on their patients in the last minute and rush them to the hospital”, after the situation has worsened beyond remedy. Even an intelligent modern CEO like Steve Jobs had to fall a victim of this trap, when it came to choosing a medicinal stream for his pancreatic cancer. For terminal illnesses, or for illnesses that can get fatal in advanced stages and require surgical intervention, the alternate medicinal streams get absolutely clueless on what is to be done. They can “manage the show” for sometime and “make you feel good” for a little more time, but they fizzle out once the symptoms become advanced. Then, allopathy finally takes over, intervenes. Say, for some reason, because of the complexity and uncertainty, they are unable to figure out what's happening. At the time too, the alternate theorists might sit by the sidelines and comment on what the surgeons are doing wrong and how they can do stuff in a jiffy, but thats pretty useless unless you have a more complete alternative to handle the situation. Unless we have a complete alternate system, (or atleast as complete as it gets, as much as allopathy), the comments don't take the form of organised study.

Tradition: For streams like Ayurveda and Siddha in India, there is the argument “These were all told by our ancestors which these other guys are all exploiting today or ignoring today.” There is surely an element of truth to it, but part of this argument is emotional, “my country”, “my mummy” thingy. Like the Steve Jobs analogy I used above. There are a few things mangled here, their validity in terms of effectiveness, an establishment of such validity, then awareness and communication, genuineness in practice, and then, last, “my country ka science tha”, that brimming pride in the gleaming eyes. It's true that some ancient texts like the Siddha medicinal texts in poetry form, are not discovered, not studied enough and not publicised, but that's an access and awareness issue. I would only say, it’s an open world, to every citizen his own country is the darling, so in a global world, let the Medicine Stream A fight it out with Medicine Stream B. Whichever works , gets accepted. Which we’ll know in a few centuries after we have messed up the whole thing, LoL. We shouldn't mix up our passion for our country with the pursuit of Truth. Brilliant minds from every land have pursued the truths in every field and struck upon original insights that aid in that pursuit. After all, till Louis Pasteur discovered what fermented beet sugar, the world was just watching people die. May be we are the pooja room of the world, but Saraswathi Kataksham is global, LoL.

Lifestyle : Most alternate medicinal streams tend to explain their unreliability, with “lifestyle” choices of the patient. “It doesn’t work because it’s all tied to your lifestyle”, they would say. This is true, and hugely significant, and such significance is often undermined by sheer ignorance, even among the otherwise literate crowds. Unfortunately, health awareness, is like personal finance literacy. How-many-ever times people tell you the right thing and educate you on risk and return, you foolishly believe what you want to believe and go put your money in a chit fund first thing in the morning, LoL. Like the potato chips pack I devoured just now. But the "lifestyle kills it" argument, is not true only for alternate medicine, it’s true for allopathy too. It’s common nowadays, in the light of modern research trends, for allopathy doctors to suggest lifestyle changes before medical management, and also to suggest Meditation, natural foods, diet and exercise changes etc wherever found to be relevant and helpful, but only upto a stage where these things can manage the show. So it’s not like, allopathy ignores lifestyle management. To be fair, the alternate streams should be credited for creating greater awareness in allopathy research by pointing their significance and relevance. Again, while most doctors suggest meditation where relevant, Yoga is suggested only with caution. Because, as much as Yoga done in the right way can have its benefits, Yoga done the wrong way can land the patient into fresh issues, over which again the doctor has no control, like lifestyle.

Subjectivity : Because the major part of the problem is the lifestyle, or so they believe, the problem is also prone to a lot of "customised" explanations. This is fine. But this also becomes an escape hatch, for things that you are not able to explain. If a doctor looks at two patients with a similar symptom, he may decide that their causes are different. But if two doctors look at the same patient, they might still decide that, the cause, according to their views, is different. This gap in subjectivity is better closed, by a framework that allows a peer to challenge your study and to find patterns among all the subjectivity. Given a patient, and assuming the doctors are equally qualified in their streams, two doctors from Allopathy are likely to agree on the broad causes better, rather than two doctors from an alternate stream. Now, which one is the whole truth, which stream and which of the two doctors in that stream ? Is it subjective based on the patient's condition or subjective based on the doctor's study of it ?

Adoption: One question that still remains and pertinent is : "Have you tried ? Try and then speak." . While this is a valid question, it can also take wrong directions for the uninformed. Most people, would like to have an answer to another question that arises before this : "Is it worth a try? If yes, why ?". The answer for this is either not clear, or not clearly communicated, or unconvincing, or incomplete except for the passionate appeals. The appeals are like the shouts on the Marina : "He is the only REDEEMER", kind of thing, okay for suddenly waking up from slumber, but not convincing for long-term adoption. If we don't pause to ask the question "Is it worth a try" before trying, we might as well be trying anything that anyone says, the seller of panacea with a mike on the pavement who supplies mysterious potions in minisule portions. There is always the answer :"You'll try when you feel the pinch". This is true, but it doesn't answer the question still. May be we all will turn to alternate medicine after getting frustrated with allopathy and its side-effects, just like some who do the converse.Oh, by the time, we won't have any money left, and by then, alternate medicine also would have got commercialized, so we won't even be able to shift loyalties. :-) :-)

Whatever may be said about the research, the passion of some promoters of alternate medicine is amazing and is born of a genuine concern for wholesome health of their fellowmen. Their approach is different, but the fervour with which they learn and update their study of the subject is unquestionable. Some of it, arises out of what they see as the public being misguided by the marketing giants, who mask the truth of things or the basic causes of a disease lying untreated while the symptoms are dressed up and covered up with a pill mania. The "misguidance" theory works both ways. The alternate streams believe, pharma companies are misguiding, pause them for a moment and go to the other camp, you'll hear Allopathy saying that the alternate streams are misguiding. If you are too baffled, I think it's easier for you to become a doctor yourself and not go to one. But, Oh God, medical education is costly and you'll end up misguiding others, gathering a lot more sin, because of which you will be born as a patient once again in the next birth, and the cycle continues. LoL. Not without reason it is said, 'Iha samsaare bahu dustare'.

Commerce: Of course, Allopathy and western medical science today have got entangled into a lot of other issues and maladies. Legality, insurance, Big Pharma, side effects, over-cautious and aggressive medication, trial medication under uncertainty, suppression of facts, greed, blatant promotion and mindless marketing, camouflaging of bad practices as good ones and then deep and deliberate over-commercialization. Some back-end parts of the muck is not different from organized crime. It ain't Healing that is paramount any more. It's some money, and then some healing, if it happens that is. As I wrote earlier, Pharmaceutical research has got mangled with money, law and governance, so much so that the "intention to cure" has become an also-ran motive, rather than the primary one. But I guess, these are present in various other streams of human life, no point singling out Medicine. As a race, we are generally doomed in many ways, and specifically “extra doomed” in few ways, LoL. I also expect these negative phenomena to happen in alternate medicinal streams whenever they hit the threshold level of wider acceptance and practice. If you are Windows, you have viruses. It's like saying, adopt other streams because Allopathy has issues. As those alternate streams grow in size and acceptance, you'll have the same maladies because the malady is there in the mind of Man, not in the tools you choose.

Effectiveness: That said, we can't say alternate medicine streams are all ineffective. It's just that, their effectiveness is not part of meticulous, unambiguous documentation and framework, that can be independently studied by others in comparable environments, under controlled conditions and across cultures and geographies. It’s more like the beneficial effects of home remedies, native wisdom, meditation, yoga etc, effective indeed in pockets based on context, particularly in prevention and consciously healthy lifestyles, some of them supported by occasional research, but not all and not all the time.

Completeness : There is a view that while Allopathy has its merits and relevance on the surface (diagnosis, treatment), it is hugely incomplete in its study of the roots and causes, there are entire sets of insights that it is refusing to acknowledge. Many alternate streams, (some bordering on healing techniques and not exactly Science) insist on a strong mind-body connection, and then, a spirit-mind-body connection to disease. Allopathy might appreciate it "kinda broadly", but we should credit the alternate streams for highlighting the connection, that the root of disease lies in our thoughts, foods and lifestyles, in that order. Some border work between Allopathy and alternate streams have definitely resulted in new learning for Allopathy. A Mahesh Yogi volunteering to be medically studied under trance during Meditation or Carl Jung's focussed study on Man's Consciousness have, later found relevance and attention from mainstream research, even though viewed with suspicion in early stages. Good scientists are humble when they see technical merits even if they are outside their domain of study. This has led to "Holistic" medicine. But the problem with the term is, each stream claiming it is more holistic than the other. Holisticker than thou, LoL. But the complete truth is better pursued, by each stream, acknowledging the areas where a stream is clearing lacking and adopting insights from other streams, with a honesty in approach and healing as the objective.

It’s also possible, that we are all living in a Matrix-like illusory haze, all “falsely” believing in Allopathy, where, in fact, that’s the villain. Evolved believers of alternate medicine are mocking at our balloon, filled with the gas called research, waiting for it to be pricked. We’ll tumble in a free fall, and land in their hands, and they’ll then take care of all of us with affection and succour :-) . Then, you should know, anything like this blog post, which “clearly” re-assured the balloon is safe, is actually warning you, that it might not be. I mean, otherwise, why would someone go to great lengths to reassure you repeatedly :-) ? Like the analysts and officials who always said, “everything is fine”, till the bubble burst on the sub-prime housing crisis. The Truth will set you on fire, and then it will set you free.

Disclaimer:
Three specific disclaimers, in addition to the general ones at the blog footer :
1. I have no knowledge about any medicinal science. My knowledge of medicine is lesser than my knowledge of music, which is documented earlier here. It's an unresearched post on the importance of research, LoL. I am just an intellectual patient, with exactly 2 cents in my pen and pocket, LoL, with which I can’t substantiate any of these claims, including your medico-legal one.

2. I am willing to be corrected. Expect an update five years from now, when I have transformed and converted to the alternate evangelists, err... I mean, of medicine. Some of my passionate friends have already "moderated" my views on this post, a few more strokes, and they may have their way, LoL. By now, it’s well-known that I usually adopt late, particularly when it comes to the good things of life. The more virtuous it is, the more time I take to adopt. :-) :-) Not exactly the satsang you want to be in.

3. And please, I haven’t seen Aamir Khan’s TV episode on medicine, LoL.

Friday, December 2, 2011

A friend's post on Facebook drew my attention to an article about the posthumous tribute-wave for Steve Jobs. For a quickie without following the conversation elsewhere, the article says 'Steve Jobs wasn't great, he wasn't even close' . Among other things, it draws a comparison in terms of greatness, to Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine and gave it free, deciding not to patent it. In other words, who is greater and, mummy, why is Steve Jobs getting all the attention ? I wouldn't have noticed if Ramnath didn't mention it, but after he did, I noticed that it was a 'sad essay, with weak arguments and too many fallacies'.

Great is a generic adjective that spans many fields. For example, a great musician, a great emperor, a great surgeon and so on. You cannot exactly compare greatness in one field with another and often, greatness in certain times, with other times.

In the field of, say, technology business, and in his times he was greater than many of his contemporaries. He did things differently. Many clicked, some didn't, some clicked later. He was thrown out of his company and staged a comeback and then staged a turnaround and rebuilt the fascination full circle. He might have been heavy-headed, but lot of creative/successful people are that. In the field that he chose as his passion, he manifested that passion into results that satisfied him and those he sought to impact. Such success was also acknowledged by others. That, in itself, is what only a small percentage, get to do.

He chose expensive style for his products, and was convinced there was a market for it. In all possibility he could have flopped, thats what the gurus would have got to say. But he defied tradition, the current market gyaan, and clicked, not once, but time and again. To have an intrinsic sense for a niche market, spot it and pursue it, entails the risk of stepping out of your comfort zone and being ready to sink in the process. You need to be grounded in your security with your own self, to be able to confront and conquer the insecurity in the world. It's the stuff true entrepreneurs are made of, or seek to be. We can't think like them and they can't think like us. They better not.

The article questions people's assumptions, success = greatness. But the article also assumes, charity > commerce. Coming from the charity bastion, I should have jumped to agree with the latter, but, sadly, not yet. Even if it were true, I guess we are too far away from that . Those beautiful times are yet to come. It requires our entire civilization, or huge parts of it, to think differently, on complexly intertwined issues: regarding our motivation, our money, our work ethic and our duty as a human on earth. And it will take lots of births for all of us to get there. Call it the critical mass for compassion or the escape velocity for enlightenment. Like in climate change, we have a reputation for refusing to learn until we get whacked thoroughly by Mamma Earth. Inner climate change is not going to be any simpler and Pappa God is going to have a tough time handling us. Hearts, take a lot more time to melt than glaciers. Questions like these are important to contemplate, but the answers need to be well-written.

Finally, think of the praises that arrived as like people attending a e-funeral. A life gone unnoticed or less noticed (say, Salk) is not any different from a life gone well-noticed, after it has gone, that is. In the former case, lives were impacted, sure, but most people may not have related to the individual, so they didn't write. In Steve's case, he too impacted and, it so happens, many people seem to relate to the individual, because the device was such. Interestingly, I noticed a billboard at the Kundarapalli Gate signal in Bangalore, a huge billboard ad by a real estate developer, saying just 'RIP Steve'. It's still an ad, but it shows people who used the devices fell head over heels for the brand. To connect two obituaries and compare their impact, would be like comparing the tears of two funerals, one with 10 people and another with 1000 people. Sorrow is the same for everyone. Death is a great equalizer in that sense.

Of course, great is different from good. To evaluate goodness is a larger call, you need to be able to evaluate the interplay of motives, constraints, values etc and in the light of the operating environment. Goodness is all-inclusive, includes personal life, relationships and even preservation of monuments :) :) , which Steve Jobs wasn't particular about . Greatness, on the other hand, is more explicit, can be segmented into streams, and therefore gets evaluated quickly and easily. You can't evaluate your goodness, because that'll be biased. Others can't, because they have incomplete information. Only God can, but He doesn't publish the papers. What to do ? :) :)

That is why the scriptural prayers say : Lead us from darkness to light, falsehood to truth. Lead us from proprietary software to open source. Trap us not into Apple, but deliver us from Microsoft. Give us our daily bread and butter, Facebook and Twitter. But don't lead us to immortality, it gets boring. Life without an end, will be like watching a terrible movie in a dirty theatre, all the time you are wondering, when will the movie end and the mosquitoes stop, and the lead jodi is still dancing around the trees and rolling on the hills , on the screen. Death, disease and dumping are part of the grand game. Sing a kolaveri song to release your stress, and move on to make your life colorful, cheerful and creative. Like a Mac.

Oops, for fair disclosure, like the author, even I don't own an Apple device or share. :) . And probably, that's why I am like this !

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These reflections draw sometimes from readers and friends who initiate ideas, build up discussions, post comments and mention interesting links, some online and some over a cup of coffee or during a riverside walk. Thank you.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this blog are the blogger's personal opinions and made in his individual capacity, sometimes have a story-type approach, mixing facts with imagination and should not be construed as arising from a professional position or a counselling intention.